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You were sleeping so well, I didn’t want to awaken you. I returned home to check on a few things and shower and change. Will pick you up at nine. Cam.
Oh. My. God. It was the same as a lie. He had written the note as though leaving at dawn, rather than minutes after the most incredible orgasm of her life.
“Bastard!” She wadded the note up and tossed it to the couch with a furious flick of her wrist.
Then in a burst of anger, she scooped it up, smoothed it out, opened her briefcase, and furiously shoved it inside.
“You’re so dead, Cameron Falladay,” she snarled, shaking with anger as she stood naked, her body still sensitized by his touch and sated by his possession of her. “You are so fricken dead. ”
Jaci jerked her cell phone from the desk and hit Courtney’s number. It was late. Too late to be calling, but she was burning inside, furious.
“Jaci?” Courtney’s tone was concerned, and faintly drowsy, when she answered. “What’s wrong?”
Jaci looked at the clock. It was after one in the morning.
“I’m sorry. ” She blinked back angry tears. Hurtful tears. “It’s too late to call. ”
“No, don’t hang up. Just a second. ”
There was murmuring, the sound of Ian’s voice in the background, then silence.
“He left you, didn’t he?” Courtney retorted moments later, her tone irritated now. “I’ve heard rumors he does such things, but I never believed he would be so insane as to do this with you. ”
Jaci shook her head. She shouldn’t have called. She pushed her fingers through her hair, grimacing at the unfamiliar need to just talk.
“I don’t know what to do,” she finally whispered, knowing there was no one else she could talk to, no one else who could come even close to understanding this problem. “The sharing. ” She shook her head again. “The pleasure is incredible, Courtney. But I need more. ”
“We are women. ” Courtney sighed. “The need to be held is as strong as the need to be possessed. ”
Jaci moved back to the bed, pulled the comforter around her, and stared into the darkness.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said then. “I should have learned my lesson when I was twenty-one. Cam doesn’t want to be a lover, Courtney. When am I going to accept that?”
“Jaci, dear, Cam is your lover already,” Courtney stated. “The possessiveness burns in his eyes. The need for more will resolve this. You have only to press the right buttons within him. ”
“He has buttons?” She sniffed. “I haven’t found them. ”
And then, she heard the sound of a diabolical little laugh. Grown men were known to flinch at that sound. It was soft and sweet, filled with knowledge and with wicked, certain purpose.
“Ah, my friend,” she drawled then. “Shall I tell you about the buttons such men possess?” Her voice lowered. “Take notes now dearest, because trust me, there are buttons and then, there are buttons. And for this man, who I know has never looked at a woman as he looks at you, for as long as I have known him, he would have many, many buttons. ”
Jaci breathed in roughly. “Games,” she whispered. “I hate playing games. ”
“Not games, Jaci. ” She could almost see Courtney’s frown. “This is no game. It is a war, my friend. And you must learn the rules or he will walk over your heart and bleed you to death. You know your lover, you know what you need. Fight for this, Jaci. Fight for his love. ”
The foreign flavor of her friend’s voice soothed, softened.
“Do not worry. ” Courtney laughed then. “I intend to help you in this. ”
And this time, it was Jaci that flinched.
13
Here was the problem with becoming involved with a man a woman thought she knew. There were all those tangled memories, times when there was tenderness, times when there was anger. There was the memory of adrenaline coursing in those first stages of attraction. The memory of the man, who had always been dark but who had watched her in a way he hadn’t watched other women. Even though she hadn’t been fully a woman. And there was the memory of Cam’s “buttons. ”
And there was the memory of the times when she had been so pissed with him that she could have kicked him. Each time he had dragged her from a party, each time she had learned he had warned a particularly wild boy away from her. Damn him, every time he had looked at her with those eyes of his full of the silent promise that one day she would belong to him.
And there was the memory of certain “buttons. ” Certain ways of ensuring Cam’s attention, of pricking at the male instincts she had sensed he had. Ways of making certain he noticed her, that he came to her, that he desired her. When was been twenty-one, at that party he had dragged her from, she had realized then how the presence of other men around her made him nervous.
